It was a snowy Halloween evening when someone knocked off Tommy’s face with a snowball.

Or really, someone knocked the green Greta the Goblin mask right off his face while he was walking along in front of my house. I saw the whole thing. OK, I heard the impact and saw him running away, crying like he’d wet himself.

I went outside to see what happened. It wasn’t dusk yet. A crow squawked somewhere. Other kids were trick-or-treating in long johns and monster masks. I ran back inside to put on my plastic pointy ears and Golden Fleece cape. Then I told Mom I was going out.

Tommy’s Greta mask lay on the sidewalk, half-buried in the snow. Looking across the street I could see Tommy himself in his mother’s arms, sobbing himself silly. Yeah, he’s a big baby.

The mask’s straps hung loose in the snow. All around it, there were small impressions in the snow where particles from an exploding projectile would have landed.

“Like I thought,” I said. “He was snowballed from behind.”

“I don’t think so.”

I looked up to see Trey coming over. The visor of his Planet Trooper helmet was open and his breath puffed out in clouds.

“If someone hit him from behind, he would have landed on his face.” He gestured to the area around the mask. “There would be a big impression in the snow.”

I had to admit he was right. There wasn’t much chance that the mask would get knocked off either.

“Well then someone hit him from the side,” I said. “Over there.”

I looked toward the street, where dozens of footprints crisscrossed in the fresh snow.

“That’s not it!”

I turned to see her approaching. I clenched my teeth as my heart wobbled a little. Neela. She was wearing a trench coat and fedora. Just like her to be more appropriately dressed than everyone.

“Look at the mask,” she said. “It landed in the snow right side up. If something hit him from the side, it would be lying on its side or its face.”

She looked us and said, “The snowball came from above.”

I looked straight up into the cold gray sky.

“Oh gosh,” Trey said. “Do you mean–God dropped a snowball on Tommy’s head?”

“Uh, that’s not quite what I meant,” Neela said.

The revelation dawned on me suddenly. “No, wait! I got it!”

Neela watched me with a vague smile, sure I’d embarrass myself. I wasn’t afraid of her. I had the whole thing figured out.

“This has all been a set-up,” I said. “It wasn’t someone behind or from the side, or even above.”

“Who then?” Trey asked.

“It was Tommy himself!”

Trey gasped, but Neela rolled her eyes.

“It makes perfect sense,” I said. “He came out here and made himself a giant snowball. He dropped it on his own head, knocked his mask off, and ran away to tell his mommy.

“And he almost got away with it too. But he hadn’t counted on having to deal with me! Isn’t that right, Tommy?”

I spun toward Tommy’s house, but he wasn’t on the front porch anymore. He wasn’t anywhere in sight.

As I watched, a crow flew up and perched on the corner of his roof, sending chunks of snow spraying down in every direction.

I turned hesitantly and looked at the roof of our house. There was another crow sitting there, its head twitching back and forth. If crows laugh, I think this one would have laughed.

I sighed loudly and stormed toward my front door. Behind me, I heard Neela. “So he was walking by and the crow knocked snow off onto him.”

“That’s still the next closest thing to a snowball from God,” Trey said. “My parents were right–!”

I went inside and pulled my plastic ears off. It was too cold for trick-or-treating.